while reading about the origins of pac man this morning, my poetic mind dropped its jaw. iwatani created a game knowing that we tend to chase ghosts of our former selves around, mirroring a kind of labyrinth of selfdom. however, if we just stood still, these ghosts, although put in motion by our momentum, would continue on like an object in space with no gravity to yield them, save a corner or a wall that they might happen to encounter which will only serve to bounce them into another direction, and any direction at that. how strange to think that these former selves, these ghosts, are seemingly autonomous, that they need no direction and take no real direction from us. the connection we have with them is an illusion, reflected or made manifest in the corners and walls of the maze of selfdom we have constructed. iwatani, thank you for reminding me that it is i who has been in hot pursuit of some ghostly mazed-in self, if, for nothing else, the sheer cyber encounter of it all.